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CUBANS ALLEGEDLY PLOTTED TO SMEAR MENENDEZ – WaPo’s Carol D. Leonnig and Manuel Roig-Franzia report on another strange twist in the Bob Menendez saga: “Sen. Robert Menendez is asking the Justice Department to pursue evidence obtained by U.S. investigators that the Cuban government concocted an elaborate plot to smear him with allegations that he cavorted with underage prostitutes, according to people familiar with the discussions. In a letter sent to Justice Department officials, the senator’s attorney asserts that the plot was timed to derail the ­political rise of Menendez (D-N.J.), one of Washington’s most ardent critics of the Castro regime. At the time, Menendez was running for reelection and was preparing to assume the powerful chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

-- “According to a former U.S. official with firsthand knowledge of government intelligence, the CIA had obtained credible evidence, including Internet protocol addresses, linking Cuban agents to the prostitution claims and to efforts to plant the story in U.S. and Latin American media. … The intelligence information indicated that operatives from Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence helped create a fake tipster using the name ‘Pete Williams,’ according to the former official. The tipster told FBI agents and others he had information about Menendez participating in poolside sex parties with underage prostitutes while vacationing at the Dominican Republic home of Salomon Melgen, a wealthy eye doctor, donor and friend of the senator. …

-- “The allegations against Menendez erupted in public in November 2012, when the Daily Caller, a conservative Web site, quoted two Dominican women claiming Menendez had paid them for sex.” http://wapo.st/1oCOqqz

TEA-PARTY CHALLENGE HAS ROBERTS ON EDGE – POLITICO’s Manu Raju files this dispatch from Abilene, Kansas: “Eric Cantor had just lost his job in astonishing fashion, and official Washington was trying to make sense of what happened. But the defeat of the House majority leader triggered a more visceral reaction from Republican Pat Roberts of Kansas. ‘I might be next,’ a deadly serious Roberts recalled telling fellow GOP Sen. Bob Corker during a ride on the Senate subway. ‘You never know.’

-- “Roberts has emerged as a case study of the personal and professional toll even a nominal challenge from the right can take on a sitting senator — and a vivid illustration of the impact the tea party can have even when it loses, as it has in nearly every GOP Senate primary this year. Roberts is widely expected to survive an Aug. 5 faceoff against tea party-backed Milton Wolf, whose campaign has been treading water for months. But at 78 and now in his fourth decade in Congress, the senator nonetheless has the look of a changed man. He has appeared increasingly on edge, several of his colleagues say, and his voting pattern, according to rankings by conservative groups, has shifted markedly to the right.

-- “A onetime Marine who began his congressional career the same month that Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president, Roberts has never been the cheeriest guy in the Senate. But the challenge by Wolf, whose biggest claim to fame is that he’s a distant cousin of Barack Obama, has sent the senator into a frequent state of agitation. ‘Interview is over,’ Roberts snapped in May at a reporter who pressed him on whether election-year calculations prompted him to call on former Democratic Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to resign as Health and Human Services chief even though he had strongly backed her nomination.” http://politi.co/1qeBPcO

McDANIEL’S ATTORNEY: WE CAN OVERTURN THE COCHRAN VICTORY – Geoff Pender reports for The Clarion-Ledger: “A lawyer for Chris McDaniel said campaign canvassers started going through records at every courthouse statewide on Monday and he's confident McDaniel can successfully overturn the June 24 GOP runoff. The Thad Cochran campaign countered that few voting irregularities are being found and the vote should stand. … Tyner said he is uncertain the number of ineligible votes the campaign has found. McDaniel's campaign reported 4,900 late last week, and McDaniel in television interviews said 5,000. The McDaniel campaign has said a majority of these are people who voted in the June 3 Democratic primary, then crossed over June 24 and voted in the Republican runoff, which is prohibited by state law.” http://on.thec-l.com/1xICuaB

-- But the Mississippi GOP said Cochran won the race by 7,667 votes and sent the results Monday to the Secretary of State to be certified, AP reports: http://politi.co/1tiUeuv

SPEAKER BOEHNER is eyeing a late-July House vote “to authorize a lawsuit against President Barack Obama, juggling legal and political considerations as he tries to check executive power and stoke the Republican base. Roll Call’s Daniel Newhauser: http://bit.ly/1k1RXdN

DEFENSE SECRETARY CHUCK HAGEL AND GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, brief the Senate Armed Services Committee on the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, at 9:30 a.m. in SVC-217. It is a closed-door briefing.

THE SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE is expected to take up legislation Thursday to patch a budget hole in the Highway Trust Fund, said the top Republican on the panel, Orrin Hatch of Utah. “The chairman is moving ahead,” Hatch told reporters. Chairman Ron Wyden delayed a vote on an initial draft of the legislation shortly before lawmakers left for their July 4 recess. Republicans had complained it didn’t include any spending cuts, and Wyden has been eager to win bipartisan support for his plan. POLITICO Pro’s Brian Faler: http://politico.pro/1xLCIxL

GOOD TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 8, 2014, and welcome to The Huddle, your play-by-play preview of all the action on Capitol Hill. Send tips, suggestions, comments, complaints and corrections to swong@politico.com. If you don’t already, please follow me on Twitter @scottwongDC.

TODAY IN CONGRESS – The Senate is in at 10 a.m. and at 11 a.m. will continue work on a bill to protect and enhance opportunities for recreational hunting, fishing, and shooting, which cleared a procedural hurdle Monday. The Senate will recess from 12:30 to 2:15 p.m. for the weekly party caucus lunches.

The House meets at noon with votes expected around 6:30 p.m. on a number of bills considered under suspension of the rules, including the Veterinary Medicine Mobility; The Preclearance Authorization Act; The Social Media Working Group Act; and The Honor Flight Act.

AROUND THE HILL – Sen. Sherrod Brown speaks about what Social Security Disability Insurance means to American workers and their families, at 9:30 a.m. at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, 1333 H St. NW.

Sen. Bernie Sanders meets with Veterans Affairs Secretary nominee Robert McDonald at 4 p.m. in Dirksen 332. Rep. Trent Franks and the Duck Dynasty family speak on causes of cleft lip and palate and The Mia Moo Fund, at 6 p.m. in the House Triangle.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer and Louise Slaughter host a viewing of “Trainsforming America,” a new documentary that advances the notion that passenger and high speed rail is the promise and the future of transportation, 5:30 p.m. in the CVC Orientation Theater South.

INSIDE HARRY REID’S WAR ON KOCH – “At first, it seemed like just another example of Harry Reid being Harry Reid,” Kenneth P. Vogel writes for POLITICO Magazine. “The Senate majority leader, whose unscripted attacks can veer into bellicosity and take liberties with facts, spoke on the Senate floor last October and appeared to blame billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch for the government shutdown. ‘By shutting down the government,’ Reid said, ‘we’re satisfying the Koch brothers and Ed Meese, but millions of people in America are suffering.’ In January, he went further, accusing the Kochs of ‘actually trying to buy the country.’ …

-- “After Reid’s ad-libbed comments, his office developed a strategy for a coordinated campaign that’s expected to resume this month and carry clear through Election Day and beyond. It’s been shaped and reinforced by Reid’s staff, including former operatives of the liberal Center for American Progress, which had pioneered Koch-bashing politics years earlier. An eclectic cast of characters was also involved, including Reid’s wife, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a top Democratic pollster, two brothers who wrote a business-management book and various liberal super PACs and nonprofits. …

-- “The Nevada Democrat had been closely following the Kochs’ growing political footprint for years, say those close to him. They say his wife, Landra Gould, also had developed something of a fascination with the brothers. After the shutdown, the couple discussed a seminal 2010 New Yorker story on the brothers’ political activity, which utilized research from CAP. And it was Gould who first suggested that her husband accuse Republicans of being ‘addicted to Koch.’

-- “Faiz Shakir and Adam Jentleson — Reid’s senior digital strategist and communications director, respectively — helped craft the Koch strategy and had previously worked at the Center for American Progress when it first started working to elevate the profile of the Kochs, who were almost completely unknown even in political circles before 2009.” http://politi.co/VUS5Xu

ZUCKERBERG’S IMMIGRATION PUSH HITS WALL – Jessica Meyers reports for the hometown paper: “Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration reform push had all the capital, connections and star power to merit success. But not even Silicon Valley could make this investment — and the Facebook founder’s first foray into national politics — pay off. Tech leaders poured millions into FWD.us, an immigration advocacy group that has dominated ad buys, launched elaborate hackathons and coddled conservatives in an effort to revamp the country’s immigration system. It galloped into the debate with the tech industry’s classic certainty but wound up facing the same obstacles that have halted reform for decades. Now … the group must reconcile Silicon Valley’s highflying ambition with the sobering lessons of Washington.” http://politi.co/1k1LVdf

-- WHY OBAMA ISN’T GOING TO THE BORDER – There are very few upsides, write National Journal’s James Oliphant and George E. Condon Jr.: “President Obama evidently has decided not to put a human face on the crisis unfolding at the southern U.S. border—not even his own. The White House said over and over again Monday that Obama will not travel to the border with Mexico despite flying to Texas this week to raise money for Democratic candidates there. It's certainly in part a political decision, one meant to avoid taking ownership of a difficult issue on which the White House would prefer to share blame. But it's also one that will inflame Obama's critics on both the right and left who say the administration has been too passive in response to the thousands of young border-crossers swamping U.S. detention facilities. In other words, if Obama goes to the border, he owns the problem. If he doesn't, he's blasted for a lack of leadership.” http://bit.ly/1zkGfF8

SHOULD WASHINGTON DO MORE TO HELP AMERICANS BUY HOMES? – MSNBC’s Suzy Khimm reports from Chicago: “No one wants a return of the lending abuses that help drive the crash. But such stark inequities have also raised new questions about whether the government should try again to expand homeownership to build wealth among lower-income and minority Americans--or whether real estate investments are a risky bet that will only backfire once more... [H]ousing advocates insist it's the government's responsibility to help subsidize mortgages for Americans on the margins of the housing market. ‘If the government going to provide a guarantee for mortgages, there's got to be a duty to serve folks who would otherwise be passed over,’ says former Democratic Rep. Brad Miller, who helped write the new laws regulating abusive mortgages.

-- “Under pressure from Democrats and outside advocates, lawmakers have recently hinted they might go further to subsidize lower-income home ownership, particularly as most private lenders remain reluctant to loosen up credit. That might mean more down-payment assistance, lower fees for future borrowers, or new programs like one launched by the Federal Housing Administration that reduces premiums if homebuyers get credit counseling. But the administration can only take limited steps without broader action from a reluctant Congress.” http://on.msnbc.com/1srB0ic

CANTOR SEEKS FINANCIAL HELP – Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan reports for POLITICO: Eric Cantor’s “political operation has asked his House GOP colleagues to cut checks so he can wind down his once-powerful campaign committee, as well as pay his campaign staffers and cover any other related costs stemming from his stunning defeat last month. Under federal law, Cantor would also have to repay any funds meant for the general election spent during his unsuccessful primary campaign battle against fellow Republican Dave Brat. Since he lost and has no general election in November, Cantor would be required to return those general-election contributions to the donors. Several lawmakers and GOP aides said Cantor needs to raise upwards of $150,000 to shut down his campaign committee, perhaps far more.” http://politi.co/1qeLqQS

TEEN CREATES PLUGIN TO SHOW WHERE CONGRESS GETS ITS MONEY – “Wouldn’t it be nice to easily be able to see who’s funding your congressperson? A new browser plugin for Safari, Google Chrome, and soon Firefox, promises to do just that,” writes Business Insider’s Dave Smith. “The free plugin, called ‘Greenhouse,’ was created by 16-year-old Nicholas Rubin, a self-taught programmer based in Seattle. Greenhouse was designed to expose the role that money plays in Congress by offering ‘detailed campaign contribution data for every Senator and Representative, including total amount received and breakdown by industry and by size of donation.’ … After you install the plugin, hovering over the name of a congressman will display the latest 2014 contribution data available on opensecrets.org.” http://read.bi/1qyQ4dl

MONDAY’S TRIVIA WINNER – We had a tie: Ross Kapilian and Walton Chaney correctly answered just seconds apart that the Philippines gained independence from the U.S. on July 4, 1946.

TODAY’S TRIVIA – Walton Chaney has today’s question: Which speaker of the House penned one of the only two signatures on the Bill of Rights? The first person to send the correct answer to swong@politico.com gets a mention in the next Huddle.

GET HUDDLE emailed to your Blackberry, iPhone or other mobile device each morning. Just enter your email address where it says “Sign Up.” http://www.politico.com/huddle/

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